tinker

Definitions

vtinkertry to fix or mend"Can you tinker with the T.V. set--it's not working right","She always fiddles with her van on the weekend"

vtinkerdo random, unplanned work or activities or spend time idly"The old lady is usually mucking about in her little house"

vtinkerwork as a tinker or tinkerer

ntinkersmall mackerel found nearly worldwide

ntinkerformerly a person (traditionally a Gypsy) who traveled from place to place mending pots and kettles and other metal utensils as a way to earn a living

ntinkera person who enjoys fixing and experimenting with machines and their parts

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Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

TinkerA mender of brass kettles, pans, and other metal ware."Tailors and tinkers ."

Tinker(Zoöl) A skate.

Tinker(Ordnance) A small mortar on the end of a staff.

Tinker(Zoöl) A young mackerel about two years old.

TinkerOne skilled in a variety of small mechanical work.

Tinker(Zoöl) The chub mackerel.

Tinker(Zoöl) The razor-billed auk.

Tinker(Zoöl) The silversides.

v. iTinkerTo busy one's self in mending old kettles, pans, etc.; to play the tinker; to be occupied with small mechanical works.

v. tTinkerTo mend or solder, as metal wares; hence, more generally, to mend.

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Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

ntinkerA playfully abusive epithet for a child.

ntinkerA mender of household utensils of tin, brass, copper, and iron; one who goes from place to place with tools and appliances for mending kettles, pans, etc. Tinkers have usually been regarded as the lowest order of craftsmen, and their occupation has been often pursued, especially by gipsies, as a mere cover for vagabondage.

ntinkerThe act of mending, especially metal-work; the doing of the work of a tinker.

ntinkerA botcher; a bungler; an unskilful or clumsy worker; one who makes bungling attempts at making or mending something; also, a “jack of all trades,” not necessarily unskilful.

ntinkerAn awkward or unskilful effort to do something; a tinkering attempt; a botch; a bungle.

ntinkerIn ordnance, a small mortar fixed on a stake, and fired by a trigger and lanyard.

ntinkerA small mackerel, or one about two years old; also, the chub-mackerel. See tinker mackerel, under mackerel.

tinkerTo repair or put into shape rudely, temporarily, or as an unskilled workman: used in allusion to the imperfect and makeshift character of ordinary work in metals: often with up, to patch up.

tinkerTo do the work of a tinker upon metal or the like.

tinkerTo work generally in an experimental or botchy way; occupy one's self with a thing carelessly or in a meddlesome way: as, to tinker with the tariff.

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Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary

nTinkertingk′ėr a mender of brazen or tin kettles, pans, &c

v.tTinkerto repair, esp. unskilfully

v.iTinkerto do tinker's work: to make a botch or mess of anything

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Quotations

Royal Little

“Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market.”

Arthur Bloch

“If you improve or tinker with something long enough, eventually it will break or malfunction.”

Paul Erlich

“The first rule to tinkering is to save all the parts.”

Paul Ehrlich

“The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.”

Idioms

Not worth a tinker's dam - This means that something is worthless and dates back to when someone would travel around the countryside repairing things such as a kitchen pot with a hole in it. He was called a 'tinker'. His dam was used to stop the flow of soldering material being used to close the hole. Of course his 'trade' is passé, thus his dam is worth nothing.

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Etymology

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

From Tink, because the tinker's way of proclaiming his trade is to beat a kettle, or because in his work he makes a tinkling, noise. Johnson,

Usage

In literature:

He came to Barren Valley, and they tinkered round together, and they found gold.

"The Odds" by Ethel M. Dell

The crew tinkered things up some way, and the train proceeded.

"Empire Builders" by Francis Lynde

But an absolute tinker, my dear.

"The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories" by Ethel M. Dell

It is not, as a fused product, worth a tinker's hoot.

"The Pride of Palomar" by Peter B. Kyne

The ex-tinker picked up the bottle with the candle.

"All on the Irish Shore" by E. Somerville and Martin Ross

It must not run to "art" and it must not be mere tinkering.

"Wage Earning and Education" by R. R. Lutz

Here a poor tinker passing by picked it up and put it in his wallet.

"English Fairy Tales" by Flora Annie Steel

The hardest captain that Jonathan Tinker ever sailed with was Captain Gooding of the Cape.

"Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools" by Various

Serafino too had mentioned himself, to a neighbour, his suspicion of the tinker's having saved money.

"Rome in 1860" by Edward Dicey

If you tinker them, you'll not be able to run fast enough nor far enough to get away from me.

"The Quickening" by Francis Lynde

Till then she had only tinkered at it, apparently.

"The Way of the Wild" by F. St. Mars

Now is the proper time, while he is busy tinkering with the engine.

"The Devil's Own" by Randall Parrish

A crazy crowd of tinkers!

"The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" A Tale Of The Forecastle" by Joseph Conrad

His tinker's budget was by his feet.

"From the Bottom Up" by Alexander Irvine

I don't give a tinker's cuss what you are.

"Olympian Nights" by John Kendrick Bangs

Have you ever heard the tinkering, tapping, thudding sounds made by entrenching implements or spades?

""Contemptible"" by "Casualty"

Such a top-heavy ship, with sails like a tinker's tatters, you never saw!

"Heralds of Empire" by Agnes C. Laut

Some of "Tinker" Beaty's men galloped into sight, fired, galloped on.

"Sergeant York And His People" by Sam Cowan

But the tinker trudged off home with his pack and his new purchase.

"Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories" by Various

A mast step had to be repaired, sails mended, and no end of tinkering before it met with Skipper Zeb's approval.

In poetry:

Where tinker's or gypsy's
Brats at play
Made vagrant's game of
Some citizen's way.

"Jackdaw" by Padraic Colum

Said Sym: "Kind friends, and fellow Glugs;
My trade is mending pots and mugs.
I tinker kettles, and I rhyme
To please myself and pass the time,
Just as my fancy wandereth."
("He's minel" quoth Stodge, below his breath.)

"The Debate" by C J Dennis

The servants told him to untrim
And let them see if he could swim.
The Tinker turn'd a little souer,
But there's no standing against power.
Then, with main strength, they forc'd him in,
Which took him fully to the chin.

"Lord Chesterfield And The Tinker" by William Hutton

"Yet," said Sym, as he tinkered his can,
"What should you know of her, Emily Ann?
Early as cock-crow yester morn
I watched young sunbeams, newly born,
As out of the East they frolicked and ran,
Eager to greet her, my Emily Arm."

"Emily Ann" by C J Dennis

"But haste!" they cried. "By the palace gates
A sorrowing king for a tinker waits.
And what shall we answer our Lord the King
If never a tinker hence we bring,
To tinker a kingdom so sore amiss?"
But Sym, he said to them, "Answer him this:

"Emily Ann" by C J Dennis

In news:

For store owner Duane Lewis, it's a workshop where he tinkers with the old and gives them a new light.

In science:

Besides conﬁrming the non-universal behaviour of the high end of the HMF, Crocce et al. (2010); Tinker et al. (2008) also pointed out that using more accurate second–order Lagrangian perturbation theory to set initial conditions could is relevant for an accurate HMF calibration.

The effects of baryons on the halo mass function

Tinker et al. (2008) included a non–radiative hydrodynamical simulation of a large cosmological volume within the large set of simulations that they analyzed, without however discussing in detail the effect of baryons on the HMF.

The effects of baryons on the halo mass function

Convergence of the mass function against changing initial redshift and effect of using second-order Lagrangian Perturbation Theory (2LPT) have been discussed by Tinker et al. (2008) and Crocce et al. (2010).

The effects of baryons on the halo mass function

Each of the two halo ﬁnders has its own advantages and shortcomings (see more details in Jenkins et al. 2001; White 2001; Tinker et al. 2008, etc), and the difference of halo mass and HMF deﬁned by the two methods have been discussed in several analysis, (e.g.

The effects of baryons on the halo mass function

Finally, since the groups identiﬁed by FoF algorithm have by deﬁnition no overlapping, we do not include in our identiﬁcation of SO halos any restriction to prevent such overlapping (see Tinker et al. 2008 for a discussion on halo overlapping).

The effects of baryons on the halo mass function

Tinker et al. (2008) investigated the redshift evolution of the mass function computed at different values of ∆c based on simulations including only dark matter.

The effects of baryons on the halo mass function

The “rules of the game” have been written and are not tinkered with.

Loop Quantum Gravity: An Inside View

We thank Jeremy Tinker and Luigi Guzzo, for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

A Method for Measuring the Bias of High-Redshift Galaxies from Cosmic Variance

For example, Tinker et al. [126] ﬁnd that the amplitude of f (σ) decreases monotonically by 20-50%, depending on the mass deﬁnition, from z = 0 to 2.5 and that the overall shape of the mass function evolves somewhat with redshift.

Dark matter and cosmic structure

That the domain wall density of order one appear as the difference of two densities of order Ls suggests tinkering with the Pauli-Villars subtraction may reduce heavy contributions further.

Thermodynamics of free domain wall and overlap fermions

We do what we do because it worked last time. W ith a bit of tinkering it m ight work just a bit better this time.